BGD Labs has announced its decision to end its engagement with the Aave DAO on April 1, 2026, after four years as a core technical contributor. The firm cited changes in the DAO's organizational dynamics and strategic disagreements over the development of Aave v3 and v4 as reasons for its departure. BGD Labs plans a structured offboarding process and will provide documentation to support the transition. Aave founder Stani Kulechov acknowledged BGD's contributions and expressed support for retaining the firm on a proposed security retainer. BGD has proposed a two-month, $200,000 security retainer to cover incident response for Aave v3 and related systems from April 1 to June 1, 2026, pending governance approval. Despite the announcement, Aave's native token has seen a 7% decline over the past week.